Something inside me has reached to the place
where the world is breathing.
- Kabir

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if
we give it time, it will make itself known to us. -
Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton's Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am
going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot
know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that
I am following your will does not mean that I am actually
doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I
hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right
road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be
lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you
are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my
perils alone.

ON PEACE

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways
signs of God's mercy to me.

photo: Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama, 1968

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most
difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It
demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect
purity of conscience.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to
discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error,
this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

We do not exist for ourselves...

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen
awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings,
which are all part of one another, and all involved in one
another.

We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the
fears of men and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn
us.

ON SOLITUDE

The contemplative waits in silence

and when he is answered,

it is not so much by a word

that bursts into his silence.

It is by this silence itself, suddenly,

inexplicably, revealing itself to him

as a word of great power.

photo: Thomas Merton's Hermitage in Gethsemani,
KentuckySolitude is not something you must
hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present,
and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.What can we gain by sailing to the moon
if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from
ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of
discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but
disastrous...Yet it is in this
loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you
discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose,
vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose
limits extend to infinity.If
you love truth,

Be a lover of Silence.

Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God

And will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance.

Silence will unite you to God

ON BEING HUMAN

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too
little. We stumble and fall
constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in
true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.A life is either all spiritual or
not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is
shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what
you desire.Art enables us to find
ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature
seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure,
a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is
charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my
feet. Life is this simple.
We are living in a world that is

absolutely transparent and God
is shining through it all the time. This is not just a
fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon
ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and
we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself
everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature
and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is
everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him.
It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see
it. I wonder if there are
twenty people alive in the world now who see things as they
really are.That would mean I
wonder if there are twenty people alive in the world now who see
things as they really are.That would mean that there were
twenty people who were not dominated or even influenced by any
attachment to any created thing or to their own selves or to any
gift of God, even to the highest, the most supernaturally pure of
His graces.I don't believe that there are twenty such
people alive in the world.But there must be one or two.They are the ones who are holding everything together and keeping
the universe from falling apart.

Thomas Merton is remembered as a beloved Catholic monk who wrote
eloquently of the interior life and did much to open up an
East-West dialog between religions, but it is often forgotten
that he was an accomplished poet, as well.

This poem by Thomas Merton shows his profound understanding of
the inner meanings of Zen tradition. What does Merton mean when
he talks about being "nameless" and
"unnameable"?

To be "nameless" is a state experienced by many deep
mystics, and it is particularly emphasized in nondualist
traditions, like Zen. In ecstatic communion, the mind subsides so
completely that the ego, the "I"-sense, thins or fades
out completely. The bliss that results is a profound awareness of
witnessing life everywhere, but with no "me," no
witness. You could say that there is still a point of perception,
but no perceiver.

This radical state is the loss of your name. How can you have a
name when there is no "you" there? What is there to be
named? A name is a reference to an object with an identifiable
form -- but you have become formless, unnameable! A chair is
named a "chair" only so long as it has the form of a
chair; but if the object flowed naturally through all possible
patterns and forms without stopping on one shape, could you still
call it a chair? Of course not. It has lost its identity with a
single form, it has lost its "apartment," its fixed
address, and therefore cannot be named.

Yet, surprisingly, it is the "nameless who are at home"
in the universe. In identifying with a single and limited sense
of "me," the little self rejects the vast majority of
existence. Through being nameless, we find all things within
ourselves. There is no other way to be at home in the universe.

Having no "apartment" that the ego can call home, we
find "the center of nowhere" within ourselves. Having
no fixed "me" with a start and an end, we become the
"unborn flower of nothing" -- that is, unborn and not
trapped by thing-ness.

Often this sort of description sounds rather bleak or negative,
but it is not. It is a source of indescribable joy and freedom.
It is truly the "paradise tree." In settling into this
state, the "world" -- the experience of the exterior
environment as separate, an agitated projection of the ego --
stops or "ends." Perception continues -- it is
enhanced! -- but it is no longer of an exterior world; everything
is seen as being within, a part of one's Self. This is only truly
known, however, when the mind settles, when "words end and
arguments are silent."

There is no
where in you a paradise that is no place and there
You do not enter except without a story.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist
except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely
established!

They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted
at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and a
number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon
holes for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in
it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn
flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until
words end and arguments are silent.